10 Greatest Masked Bands In Rock History
You may not be able to see their faces, but you love them anyway.
Something about rock music lends itself perfectly to the concept of masks.
The theatricality, the connection to the occult, the rejection of societal norms. Who knows for sure, but what we do know is that masked bands are cool as hell.
Masks have been used by musicians of other genres - Daft Punk, MF Doom, Deadmau5 etc. - but rock is the place where this phenomenon really got started and where some of the most famous obscured acts of all time got famous.
That's what this list is all about; the best bands who rose to fame behind the protection of a facial covering.
This ranking is based on a number of different criterion.
As well as the overall quality of the music and their impact on the business, how the band uses masks and how famous said masks are will also be taken into account.
Some of these bands don't wear masks all the time, but all of them went through a significant period of using them as part of their act.
Finally, face paint does not count as a mask.
Sorry, Insane Clown Posse, you'll have to try harder than that.
10. The Residents
When it comes to masked bands in rock music, you can trace pretty much everything back to The Residents.
The band have been around since the mid-1960s, but they gained their most famous headwear on their 1979 record Eskimo.
You could call it... eye-catching... because they wore big eyes on their head... do you get it?
The Residents' unique aesthetic quickly caught on and they became known as "the giant eyeball guys" almost immediately. This bizarre appearance fit perfectly with their musical output, which was extremely avant-garde.
The band's philosophy is that their work should do the talking for them, so the identities of its members is kept under lock and key.
The only person to ever reveal themselves as part of the group was Hardy Fox, one of its founders. He outed himself as a Resident in 2017, only to pass away the following year.
They won't be everyone's cup of tea, but The Residents' impact on music cannot be overstated. They took the idea of performance art to a whole new level and created an iconography that is still highly memorable to this very day.
You'll never look at an eye the same way ever again.